Touch and Go

I had another great flight today. It was my pre-pre-solo flight, the one designed to iron out any bumps in my landings so I'll be ready and confident to take the plane around by myself. Rocky said we'd do ten landings at Mobile Downtown.

The wind was out of the south, right down the runway. After two or three of what I considered excellent laps around the traffic pattern, Rocky said I was ready to solo and asked if I wanted to go down to St. Elmo (a small airport in our practice area) and work on some crosswind landings. I knew I needed the practice to build some confidence in my crosswind technique, so off we went.

Rocky seemed sincerely impressed with my flying today, and that meant a lot to me. As we flew around the pattern at St. Elmo, I got plenty of coaching on my landing approaches and rollouts, but in the pattern we just talked about flying in general, in a much more personal and social atmosphere than I was used to having with Rocky, who usually seems to never run out of corrections to my technique.

After four or five landings at St. Elmo, we headed back to Downtown for a smooth arrival. In all we had 9 landings today. Taxiing back, Rocky said he wouldn't mind letting me solo right then, but he had to stick to the syllabus. If all goes well, tomorrow will be the day of my second first solo!

I've been surprised how well I've done in this IFS program. I expected to have much more trouble learning all the things I didn't learn flying as a teenager in Utah. I realized today that a lot of my drive and motivation to do well and stay ahead of this program comes from the hurt of being away from my wife. Even if I'm getting an okay salary for this, I'm still paying dearly, and that makes me really want to have something to show for it.

But, in all humility, I'm sure I'd kick just as much butt if she were right here with me... probably even more. ;)